Ball State Study: Right-To-Work Results Sketchy Elsewhere

Posted January 16, 2012

Mitch Daniels is pushing a right-to-work bill as a top plank in his agenda during this year's legislative session.

A new Ball State University study shows right to work has no meaningful impact on job growth in the manufacturing sector. Economist Mike Hicks says the study examined the manufacturing sector in states where right to work became law.

Hicks says the study finds that manufacturing wages, employment and economic growth remained virtually unchanged in states after right-to-work laws took effect. He says in Indiana, the climate is almost too positive to need such a law…

“For Indiana the problem with these data are when you already have a pretty good business climate,” Hicks says. “Having right-to-work on top of it doesn‘t really do that much for you and Indiana already has a pretty good business climate.”

Hicks says there is no proof that right-to-work really helped states that passed it.

“South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, places that were poorer than Indiana,” he says. “I think it‘s just a distorted factor in looking at those data because those places would have grown with or without right-to-work.”

Hicks’ team studied the period from the Great Depression to the middle of the last decade to make its conclusions.

What is RSS? RSS makes it possible to subscribe to a website's updates instead of visiting it by delivering new posts to your RSS reader automatically. Choose to receive some or all of the updates from Indiana Public Media News:

What is RSS? RSS makes it possible to subscribe to a website's updates instead of visiting it by delivering new posts to your RSS reader automatically. Choose to receive some or all of the updates from Indiana Public Media News: